Studying Accuracy of Machine Learning Models Trained on Lab Lifting Data in Solving Real-World Problems Using Wearable Sensors for Workplace Safety

Porting ML models trained on lab data to real-world situations has long been a challenge. This paper discusses porting a lab-trained lifting identification model to the real-world. With performance much lower than on training data, we explored causes of the failure and proposed four potential solutions to increase model performance

A deep learning approach for lower back-pain risk prediction during manual lifting

Occupationally-induced back pain is a leading cause of reduced productivity in industry. Detecting when a worker is lifting incorrectly and at increased risk of back injury presents significant possible benefits. These include increased quality of life for the worker due to lower rates of back injury and fewer workers' compensation claims and missed time for the employer. However, recognizing lifting risk provides a challenge due to typically small datasets and subtle underlying features in accelerometer and gyroscope data. A novel method to classify a lifting dataset using a 2D convolutional neural network (CNN) and no manual feature extraction is proposed in this paper; the dataset consisted of 10 subjects lifting at various relative distances from the body with 720 total trials. The proposed deep CNN displayed greater accuracy (90.6%) compared to an alternative CNN and multilayer perceptron (MLP). A deep CNN could be adapted to classify many other activities that traditionally pose greater challenges in industrial environments due to their size and complexity.